April 7, 2004
SCIENCE IN THE SERVICE OF IDEOLOGY:
BORN OR BRED?: Science Does Not Support the Claim That Homosexuality Is Genetic (Robert Knight, Concerned Women for America)
The debate over homosexual “marriage” often becomes focused on whether homosexuality is a learned behavior or a genetic trait. Many homosexual activists insist that “science” has shown that homosexuality is inborn, cannot be changed, and that therefore they should have the “right to marry” each other.Beginning in the early 1990s, activists began arguing that scientific research has proven that homosexuality has a genetic or hormonal cause. A handful of studies, none of them replicated and all exposed as methodologically unsound or misrepresented, have linked sexual orientation
to everything from differences in portions of the brain, to genes, finger length, inner ear differences, eye-blinking, and “neuro-hormonal differentiation.”Meanwhile, Columbia University Professor of Psychiatry Dr. Robert Spitzer, who was instrumental in removing homosexuality in 1973 from the American Psychiatric Association’s list of mental disorders, wrote a study published in the October 2003 Archives of Sexual Behavior. He contended that people can change their “sexual orientation” from homosexual to heterosexual.8 Spitzer interviewed more than 200 people, most of whom claimed that through
reparative therapy counseling, their desires for same-sex partners either diminished significantly or they changed over to heterosexual orientation. Although still a proponent of homosexual activism, Spitzer has been attacked unmercifully by former admirers for this breach of the ideology that people are “born gay and can’t change.” Immutability is a central tenet of demands for “gay rights” and “gay marriage.”Because no single study can be regarded as definitive, more research on people who have overcome homosexuality needs to be done. But a considerable body of previous literature about change from homosexuality to heterosexuality has been compiled, and the sheer number of exceptions to the “born gay” theory should be a warning to researchers and media to proceed with caution before declaring that science has “proved” that homosexuality is genetic.
Other recent developments also suggest that homosexuality is not genetically determined. The Washington Post reported that bisexuality is fashionable among many young teen girls, who go back and forth from being “straight” to “gay” to “bi” to “straight” again.
Post reporter Laura Sessions Stepp writes:
Recent studies among women suggest that female homosexuality may be grounded more in social interaction, may present itself as an emotional attraction in addition to or in place of a physical one, and may change over time.
She cites one such study by Lisa M. Diamond, assistant professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, who in 1994 began studying a group of females aged 16 to 23 who were attracted to other females. Over the course of the study, “almost two-thirds have
changed labels,” Stepp reports.Against increasing evidence that homosexual behavior is neither inevitable nor impossible to resist, a number of studies have been widely publicized as “proof” of a genetic component. But they are either poorly constructed or misreported as to their significance.
In 1993, Columbia University psychiatry professors Drs. William Byne and Bruce Parsons examined the most prominent “gay gene” studies on brain structure and on identical twins, and published the results in the Archives of General Psychiatry. They found numerous methodological flaws in all of the studies, and concluded that:
There is no evidence at present to substantiate a biologic theory. … [T]he appeal of current biologic explanations for sexual orientation may derive more from dissatisfaction with the present status of psychosocial explanations than from a substantiating body of experimental data.
After he was roundly attacked by homosexual activists, who accused him of providing ammunition for conservatives to challenge the gay rights/civil rights comparison based on immutability, Byne denounced the “false dichotomy: Biology or Choice?” and stated that he was also skeptical of environmental theories of sexual orientation. He wrote: “There is no compelling evidence to support any singular psychosocial explanation,” and that he would never “imply that one consciously decides one’s sexual orientation.”14 But the fact remains that Dr. Byne has poked gaping holes in the most influential studies purporting to prove that homosexuality is inborn.
In May 2000, the American Psychiatric Association issued a Fact Sheet, “Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues,” which includes this statement:
“Currently, there is a renewed interest in searching for biological etiologies for homosexuality. However, to date there are no replicated scientific studies supporting any specific biological etiology for homosexuality.”
Beyond the false comfort that homosexuals need not seek to alter their behavior in any way, there may be another motive behind the release and enthusiastic reporting of these studies: political advantage. As Natalie Angier wrote in The New York Times on September 1, 1991:
[P]roof of an inborn difference between gay and heterosexual men could provide further ammunition in the battle against discrimination. If homosexuality were viewed legally as a biological phenomenon, rather than a fuzzier matter of “choice” or “preference,” then gay people could no more rightfully be kept out of the military, a housing complex or a teaching job than could, say blacks.
Simon LeVay, whose brain study in 1991 “jumped from the pages of the periodical Science to The New York Times and Time, then to CNN and Nightline, and from there to the dinner tables and offices of the country,” according to writer Chandler Burr, was quite open in his assessment
of the possible impact of his work. “[P]eople who think gays and lesbians are born that way are also more likely to support gay rights.” [...]Determining whether something has a biological cause is difficult, and locating a specifically genetic link is even more so. The handful of studies that purportedly add up to incontestable “proof” that homosexuals are “born that way” are inconclusive at best and, as Dr. Rahman notes, “largely correlational in nature.” In some cases, such as the twins studies, the evidence strongly indicates that early environment is more likely the dominant factor to have produced homosexual desires.
As Dr. Satinover emphasizes, correlation does not mean something is causative. Basketball players are tall, so height correlates with playing basketball, he notes. But there is no “basketball-playing gene.” Efforts to turn some interesting correlations into causal factors have not been successful and yet have been misused to advance a political agenda.
Perhaps the best way to describe the situation is this, as paraphrased from Dr. Satinover: Some people may be predisposed because of genetic, prenatal hormonal influences or other physical or brain differences to have personalities that make them vulnerable to the environmental factors
that can elicit homosexual desires. So is homosexuality biological? Not in the way that popular media and homosexual activists have presented it.Extremely shy and artistic young boys, for instance, who are not affirmed in their masculinity by a caring father, might be at risk for homosexuality. It’s not because of a homosexual “gene,” but because of an interrupted process of achieving secure gender identity. This can make some boys
who crave male affirmation an easy mark for seduction into homosexuality. A similar pattern can be seen in girls who don’t fit classic gender profiles, need feminine affirmation, and are targeted by lesbians who play upon the girls’ emotional needs.Such children’s vulnerability is all the more reason to protect them from early exposure to homosexual influences. The Boy Scouts of America, for instance, is right to screen out as troop leaders those men who desire other males sexually. The Scouts do so not out of bigotry, or a belief that all homosexual men molest boys. They do so out of genuine concern for the health
and well-being of the boys in their charge, including those who might be sexually vulnerable.Americans for too long have been pummeled with the idea that people are “born gay.” The people who most need to hear the truth are those who mistakenly believe they have no chance themselves for change. It is both more compassionate and truthful to give them hope than to serve them up politically motivated, unproven creations like the “gay gene.”
One of the most delightfully hypocritical arguments you'll ever hear is: "You homophobe, how can you think homosexuality is psychological rather than biological? Who would choose to be homosexual?" Posted by Orrin Judd at April 7, 2004 1:15 PM
A pointless debate.
Nobody argues that nuns are genetically programmed to avoid sex.
Why aren't the Concerned Women of America concerned enough to be reprogramming these unfortunate women to start behaving like normal human beings?
There is nothing in this world funnier than a Christian trying to explain Christian opinions about sex. Nothing.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 7, 2004 2:41 PMEver notice how often a person who believes homosexuality is genetic will use an accusation of secretly being homosexual to put the so-called "homophobe" in her place? Is it common to insult an anti-semite by secretly being a Jew, or a race-bigot by secretly being black? (Or a conservative for secretly being a liberal?)
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at April 7, 2004 2:45 PMHarry said -- Nobody argues that nuns are genetically programmed to avoid sex.
Scientists have done better. I can't believe that a man so deeply attuned with all scientific efforts at "debunking" religion would have not heard of studies of, I think Carmelite, nun brains after having had deeply religious moments. Read all about it in The Economist. It seems religious spirituality is can be explained by mechanisms not unlike those seen in psychotropic drugs.
To which one must allow a few here to say -- There is nothing in this world funnier than a Scientist trying to explain Christian opinions about spiritualism. Nothing.
Oh would I pay to see a Harry vs oj debate on the subject...
I think the psychiatrist noted here, Spitzer, has a gay son. That makes this something of a doctor, heal thyself moment.
A great many things cause the phenotype to diverge from the genotype. That we don't know which specific developmental process causes, say, cleft palate, (other than, so far as I know, it isn't inherited, which means it isn't genetic) doesn't mean it isn't innate.
Read "Nature via Nurture." Among other things, it notes the "cure" rate is close as darnnit to zero.
I have a vague memory of something about the Carmelites. Not the kind of research I put much stock in, and unless you can show me that somehow women end up in Carmelite nunneries because they were born to do so, wouldn't affect my point anyway.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 7, 2004 3:29 PMMr. Darwin might suggest that the causes of homosexuality and celibacy, if biological, are not hereditary.
Posted by: Mike Earl at April 7, 2004 3:33 PMRaoul:
Any man who tells you his heart doesn't quicken when Denzel Washington or Sean Connery is on-screen is a liar.
Posted by: oj at April 7, 2004 3:35 PMMG:
In case you haven't figured it out yet, if Harry hasn't read something it isn't true.
Posted by: oj at April 7, 2004 3:44 PMWhoops, wait a second, Harry, you read it here, so the plea of ignorance fails:
http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/009862.html
Posted by: oj at April 7, 2004 3:46 PMJeff: Strictly speaking, a thing may be genetic, but manifest only under certain conditions or stimuli.
Harry: Doesn't that rather make OJ's point for him?
Posted by: Chris at April 7, 2004 4:09 PMChris:
It's Harry, nothing can affect his point--especially not reality.
Posted by: oj at April 7, 2004 4:42 PMIt is easy to understand the motivation behind the drive to classify homosexuality as a trait as genetically heritable as the various physical manifestations of race or gender. It's viewed as a way of deflecting the argument that homosexuality is purely a matter of choice and therefore potentially subject to moral censure. What I have never understood is why, at least in modern times, those who are morally opposed to homosexuality haven't argued just as vociferously that the genetic component of sexual orientation isn't instead equivalent to an inherited disorder. You may also have a genetic predilection for losing your temper, but this doesn't give you the right to act out your frustrations with violence. The social argument over the morality of same-sex relations can be waged by either side equally well regardless of the degree to which homosexuality is heritable.
Or, to put it another way, if the majority of homosexuals are born that way, does that mean that they should enjoy a legal monopoly on same-sex relations? The question boils down to behavior no matter how you approach it.
M., that's the argument I always make, when I get forcibly dragged into the debate.
I used to say, "I can't help it, dear, I have the wife-beater gene."
Funny, in the pre-AIDS days when a [gay] was trying to get into my pants, he'd always pressure me to make a choice. "Everybody's bi, you know. You're just in denial. And if you'd just let me demonstrate (nudge nudge wink wink know what I mean know what I mean)..."
Posted by: Ken at April 7, 2004 6:42 PMNot necessarily, Mike.
Naively it might seem so. But naively, it would seem that a disease like cystic fibrosis, which almost always (until very recently) killed before its victims could breed, would die out.
I don't know -- or much care -- whether homosexuality is heritable. I'd bet, though, in cases where it isn't simply a lifestyle choice, it arises out of a melange of factors, of which developmental rather than genetic probably would dominate.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 7, 2004 9:15 PMI don't study the neural basis of homosexuality for political reasons, I can assure everyone of that. My reasons are philosophical, having to do with questions of innateness and instinct.
Now, that being said, me and my Ph.D. advisor conducted quite a bit of research on homosexuality and found that the ratio of the lengths of the index and ring finger is correlated with sexual orientation, in both men and women. At the end of this post, I've copied several titles of our articles.
Other studies have found that the finger-length ratio is *sexually dimorphic*, i.e., females have a greater ratio than men because their two fingers are more equal in length. One could argue that a difference in lifestyle might impose the sex difference in finger-lengths. Who knows what men or women could do to alter their finger lengths, but that's been argued.
Well, the sex difference in finger-length ratio is present in newborn children! This makes sense, since the sexual differentiation of the brain (caused by males' higher levels of testosterone) also occurs before birth. Thus, it seems quite likely that 1) the sexual orientation effect on finger length is present at the same age as in straights and 2) that the environmental/genetic causes of homosexuality are acting BEFORE BIRTH.
I would also like to add that William Byne is a well-respected researcher in the field and he has published a follow-up study of Simon LeVay's finding regarding INAH-3 in gay and straight men. He found that INAH-3 was indeed smaller in gay men BUT that there was no sex difference in neuron number. For some reason, the neurons were more closely packed together in gay men.
I'll close by saying that the 3rd to last paragraph in this article is particularly laughable, because it tacitly admits there could be a nature/nurture interaction going on, "...girls who dont fit classic gender profiles...".
Trying to explain an aberrant social behavior like homosexuality by recourse to volition, will, lifestyle choices, etc. is an exercise in circular logic and ultimately a tautology.
Here are some articles related to finger-lengths and sexual orientation:
1: Brown WM, Hines M, Fane BA, Breedlove SM. Related Articles, Links
Masculinized finger length patterns in human males and females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia.
Horm Behav. 2002 Dec;42(4):380-6.
PMID: 12488105 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
2: Brown WM, Finn CJ, Breedlove SM. Related Articles, Links
Sexual dimorphism in digit-length ratios of laboratory mice.
Anat Rec. 2002 Jul 1;267(3):231-4.
PMID: 12115273 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
3: Brown WM, Finn CJ, Cooke BM, Breedlove SM. Related Articles, Links
Differences in finger length ratios between self-identified "butch" and "femme" lesbians.
Arch Sex Behav. 2002 Feb;31(1):123-7.
PMID: 11910785 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
4: Williams TJ, Pepitone ME, Christensen SE, Cooke BM, Huberman AD, Breedlove NJ, Breedlove TJ, Jordan CL, Breedlove SM. Related Articles, Links
Finger-length ratios and sexual orientation.
Nature. 2000 Mar 30;404(6777):455-6. No abstract available.
PMID: 10761903 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Jeff:
There's no more likely person to have a gay son than a psychiatrist.
Posted by: oj at April 7, 2004 11:27 PMIt's important to make a distinction between female and male homosexuality. Lesbianism is heavily affected by culture. It's currently faddish in some circles, so we see a lot of it. In plenty of other cultures, it was unknown. For example, it was common for women to live together in 19th Century New England in what were jokingly called "Boston marriages," but even the idea of engaging in lesbian sex acts seldom occured to the women.
On the other hand, in societies where lesbianism is practiced, the women who are exclusively lesbian are likely to be more manly in general affect than women who are exclusively heterosexual.
I would guess that the strong emphasis our culture has placed on female team sports in the last thirty years has created environments conducive to creating more lesbians. But, the ones most likely to become lesbians are the most naturally aggressive, high testosterone female athletes.
The evidence that male homosexuality is in some way innate is stronger than for lesbianism. For example, there appear to be more bisexual women than lesbians, which is what you'd expect under most circumstances. However, there appear to be more homosexual men than bisexual men, which is strange, and seems to imply the existence of some kind of "switch."
It may or may not be universal, but it does pop up, unbidden, in a great many different cultures. The great majority of male homosexuals in America today were, by their own accounts, at least fairly effeminate little boys. Not all little boys who preferred playing with dolls to playing with trucks or footballs grow up to be homosexual, but a much higher proportion do so than is found among masculine little boys.
From a Darwinian point of view, it seems implausible that there is a gay gene that is heritable. Various theories have been put forward as to how a gay gene could avoid dying out -- e.g., maybe gays help their nieces and nephews have more children -- but nobody has ever found any evidence for them.
Other theories include malfunction of the mother's hormonal system -- boys with lots of older brothers are more likely to be gay, perhaps because of antibody reactions that build up between the mother's estrogen and the male fetus' androgens.
From an a priori point of view, the most logical theory appears to be Gregory M. Cochran's gay germ idea. Germs don't care if their human carriers are relatively infertile, as long as they can reproduce themselves. While we are evolving defenses, germs are evolving new ways to attack us. Nobody has ever found a gay germ, but then nobody has ever looked for one either.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at April 8, 2004 2:59 AMHarry comes across to me as similar to the Greek scientist (I forget his name), who unilaterally declared that no scientific experiment was possibly valid unless he, personally, witnessed it. He's clearly letting a PC agenda drive his analysis of the reports.
I don't summarily dismiss out of hand the assertion that that sexual behavior is largely genetic in origin: Take the Kennedys for instance...
As for the darwinian aspects of a homosexual gene: I first thought that propagation would not be possible, but then I remembered my genetics enough to hazard the guess that it's very likely a recessive gene, which can be carried without harm by siblings.
Two notes about the social aspects of genetic outworkings: There's no disputing the fact that, generally speaking, men are sexually more agressive than women, and that this is genetic in nature. Given this, why isn't the "It's in my genes!" argument being seriously advanced to implement a Sharia-style culture where men's more excessive sexual desires are given the SAME genetic pass being proposed for Gays?
Ken's comment is very apropos, and everyone's avoidance of it is typical: One of the great tennis rivalries of recent memory was Chris Everett and Martina Nataralova (sp?). One of Chris' beefs was how almost all women in the professional circuit at the time fell into straight/gay camps, with the lesbos openly intimidating the straights into sex. She started and sponsored a program to put some backbone into the straights that was highly resented by the obvious party.
I would feel more comfortable if society and law evolves to the point of finding gay bosses hitting up their same-sex subordinates guilty of sexual harassment. My comfort level would increase immensely with a successful conviction...
Posted by: Ptah at April 8, 2004 7:04 AM"There's no more likely person to have a gay son than a psychiatrist."
And you know that how?
Harry:
Have you ever noted that the first sign of a bankrupt argument is the ad hominem attack?
Steve:
Yet it seems likely there are many more bisexual men than most studies have shown, they just have sense enough to deny having sex with men:
http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/007175.html
It's one of the things that got researchers so confused about AIDs--the straight men whose source of AIDs they couldn't figure out tirned out not to be quite straight.
Posted by: oj at April 8, 2004 8:23 AMre: gay gene
Being recessive won't save it; it'll still die out.
Now, CF is a good example; if you have one copy of the gene, you're resistant to malaria. Two copies, you die. You see none of it in populations that weren't subject to malaria; in those that were, it reaches equilibrium at a few % occurance where the advantage of immunity is just counterbalanced by the risk of marrying another carrier.
One might imagine a 'gay gene' that made sensitive, artistic males who got more women with one copy, but gay males with two... there are other scenarios that are plausible, but if it's a gene with a disadvantage it must have a counterbalancing advantage or will eventually breed out.
Posted by: mike earl at April 8, 2004 12:02 PMJeff-
I think Harry is quite familiar with that style of argument.
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford,Ct. at April 8, 2004 1:29 PMMike E. --
"Now, CF is a good example"
This I have never heard. Sickle cell anemia, however, does provide malaria resistance and with a double dose causes some nasty problems. I think, however, it is not the killer that CF is/was so I think your argument is weakened a bit.
Posted by: Uncle Bill at April 8, 2004 2:08 PMBeing labeled PC is a novelty for me.
Being labeled PC for suggesting that homosexuality is multifactorial, which is obviously is, is a surprise.
Orrin's fantasy that men who hate their fathers become homosexuals or atheists or atheist-homosexuals is the kind of risible nonsense you get when you decide that the universe had better be the way you want, rather than the way it is.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 8, 2004 4:33 PMUncle Bill:
My error, I meant Sickle Cell; the fact that it is harmful (= causes less grandchildren) in the duploid form explains why it isn't univeral.
But then SC carriers are about 10% of the relevent population; CF carriers 0.4%. I suppose that might just be accumlated mutation... with only a 0.4% chance of your partner being affected, it won't breed out very fast. It might be that mutations can hold it up at the .4% level.
Tay-Sachs is a more interesting one; it's almost as common among Ashkenazic Jews as Sickle-Cell is among blacks, and is far deadlier, so it almost has to be good for something in the carrier form...
Posted by: mike earl at April 8, 2004 4:53 PMHarry:
You're mostly PC, from Darwinism to Stalinism to hatred of religion to worship of FDR and so forth. You're a font of the received wisdom of liberal Eastern elites.
Posted by: oj at April 8, 2004 5:01 PMI thought you preached the wisdom of received wisdom.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at April 8, 2004 11:02 PMYes, received from our grandfathers, not from trend sucking diletantes.
Posted by: oj at April 8, 2004 11:27 PMHarry: it has been a very long time since I took genetics, but, IIRC, even a 100% lethal recessive will not die out that confers no benefit on the carrier in haplotype. It can be proved mathematicaly. I think it was Haldane or maybe Hardy.
Now as to a Gay Gene, I offer this:
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/?020128crbo_books
BURIED TREASURE by LOUIS MENAND
The impish brilliance of John Maynard Keynes.
Issue of 2002-01-28
At Cambridge, Keynes was a member of the Apostlesthe famous "secret" (everyone seems to have known about it) society that was founded in 1820. Keynes was Apostle No. 243. He was vetted for membership by two fellow-undergraduates, Lytton Strachey and Leonard Woolf, and he became friends with two other Apostles as well, Thoby Stephen and Clive Bell. They were the seeds of Bloomsbury. . .
The bond was formed on the basis of what both men referred to as the Higher Sodomythe love of beautiful young men. (It also had something to do with the anxiety both men felt about their sex appeal. . . When they were at Cambridge, Keynes and Strachey were continually on the prowl for sexually eligible undergraduates who might just squeak through the intellectual requirements and be made Apostles. The atmosphere at Cambridge, at least among Keynes's social set, seems to have been extremely homoerotic. . .
The First World War, inexplicably, seemed to change this whole culture. Virginia Woolf's brother Adrian, who had replaced Keynes as Duncan Grant's lover, suddenly married a woman. So did Lytton Strachey's formerly homosexual brother James. Grant, who had been having an affair with David (Bunny) Garnett, took up with Vanessa Bell, who was estranged from Clive. ("Incestuous" is not far from being the best word for describing the Bloomsbury sexual circus. Many years later, in 1942, Garnett married Duncan and Vanessa's illegitimate daughter, Angelica, a development that even Keynes found bizarre. It was the sort of thing that gives polymorphousness a bad name.) Lytton, whose earlier proposal to Virginia had been withdrawn almost as soon as it was accepted, set up house with Dora Carrington. And in 1918 Keynes met Lydia Lopokova, a prima ballerina in Diaghilev's company. They were married in 1925.
There was nothing blanc about the Keyneses' mariage. Their hope to have children was disappointed: Keynes made a sad pun about it on his titlebarren Keynes. But Lydia was an affectionate and even flamboyant partner. She was, after all, a woman of the theatre. She had had an interesting marital and sexual history before she took up with Keynes, and she was at least as bohemian and risqu as he was.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at April 8, 2004 11:29 PM